Sex advice with Suzi Godson: Faking it because sometimes sleep is more important

Is it really that bad to fake an orgasm? I’ve been married for 10 years, we have two children and I enjoy sex, but sometimes I fake an orgasm so the pressure is off. It doesn’t happen all the time and I don’t feel as if I’m missing out because I have orgasms on my own. I feel a bit guilty though. Is this a problem?

Habitual faking is clearly counter-productive but if you are not doing it all the time and you are capable of achieving orgasm, what your husband doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him. When it comes to sex, honesty is the best policy, but there are times in every woman’s life when getting to sleep feels more important than getting to the point of no return.

In an ideal world, we’d be able to explain that without injuring anyone’s sense of self but, for men, climax is very clearly defined by ejaculation and, as a result, they tend to be rather goal-oriented about sex. The polite male likes his woman to be safely across the line before he shoots but this inadvertently creates performance pressure for his partner. If, at a certain point, she realises she cannot give him what he wants (which is to be able to give her an orgasm), she fakes it, just so he can go to sleep with his ego intact.

Faking orgasm is a relationship maintenance strategy that psychologists describe as “altruistic deceit” and it is really detrimental only if it is inveterate and motivated by fear and insecurity.

Research by Erin Cooper at Temple University in the United States found that, for a small group of participants, faking an orgasm actually enhanced their own sexual experience.

Evolutionary theorists believe female vocalisation at orgasm increases male excitement and hastens ejaculation, thereby increasing the likelihood of conception.

Because faking orgasm is a secret behaviour, it isn’t easy to establish accurate statistics about motivations or commonality, but my own research into orgasms shows that 62.9% of women have never faked orgasm, compared with 74% of men. That doesn’t mean these women climax every time; only 29.7% of female participants say they “always” have orgasm with a partner.

For the percentage of women who do fake orgasm, the most frequent motivations are: “to please my partner” (58.3%); “I feel self-conscious because I take too long to become sufficiently aroused” (30.6%); “I want sex to be over” (29.2%); “I know I cannot have an orgasm” (26.4%); “I don’t feel able to tell my partner how to help me to achieve orgasm” (20.8%); and finally, “I get bored” (12.5%).

It is interesting to note that, in my survey, the number of women who have never faked it (62.9%) corresponds pretty neatly with the 68% of women who find it “very” or “somewhat” easy to talk to their partner about sex. And that’s the real secret. The fact that you occasionally fake orgasm doesn’t bother your husband because he doesn’t know about it ... but it clearly bothers you.

Next time, instead of faking it, take a risk and tell him you don’t think you are going to make it past the post. It is a perfectly legitimate admission because ageing, illness, tiredness, the menstrual cycle or stress can all interfere with a woman’s ability to achieve orgasm.

You don’t need to make up excuses. You do need to convince him that it is not a big deal and, of course, once you get it off your chest, it won’t be.

Once you stop worrying about the fact that you are hiding something from the man you love, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ceased to be an issue at all.

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